Gone with the Night – A Short Story by Isaac Attah Ogezi
- By Isaac Attah Ogezi
- Published December 2, 2009
- Fiction
-
Rating:
Isaac Attah Ogezi
Born in 1976, Isaac Attah Ogezi attended the University of Jos, Jos, Plateau State where he obtained his LL.B (Hons) in 2002. He proceeded to the Nigerian Law School, Abuja, and was called to the Nigerian Bar on 12 October, 2004. Currently, he is a practising lawyer based at Keffi, Nasarawa State of Nigeria. He is published in The Rocks Cry Out (an anthology of ANA, Jos Chapter, 2002), Five Hundred Nigerian Poets (2005) and several national dailies in Nigeria. He writes plays, poems, short stories and literary essays.
View all Entries by Isaac Attah Ogezi
When the list of successful candidates came out, our names were conspicuously there. Suddenly, we became celebrities at the hospital and to neighbours and were treated with kid gloves. We didn’t have to bother ourselves with the requirement of the final stage. We were as good as living in the US. The gaiety of our movements said it all. Yes, we were medically fit to live and work in America. So confident were we that the ultra-modern mobile lab of the Agency would acquit us that we presented ourselves for the general tests.
Alas, what happened next was not what the world would believe would ever happen to a nurse. But there it was, so solid like the stethoscope one would use on a patient’s chest. Termites fed on my head. I guess you must be wondering why I‘m recounting this sad episode of my life. I believe in the purgative power of tragedies, especially those of yesterdays, to heal the wounds of today. That is what the dramatists call catharsis. It’s only by reliving the past that I can be able to grapple with the tragedies of the present. Andy‘s exit from my life is as painful as the jolt I received when I couldn’t make the final list to the US. If it had stopped at that, that wouldn’t have worried me so much like the questions it raised concerning my health. Why was I not selected? Was anything wrong with me? When their silence was too diplomatic for my liking, I embarked on a quest of self-discovery.
Dearest Chichi, you know the rest of the story. The guinea fowl had pecked on the numbered grains of my life. I was tested positive to the deadly virus. That fact stung me like the acidic tongue of a wicked mother-in-law. A tsunami that overturned my world. I, Clara Nwokocha positive? No, life has never known a worse tragedy. I was simply devastated; I saw my small world crumbling down like the sand-houses we used to build as little children by the riverbank when the rain would come with the wind to destroy. My life was cut down when the dew was still fresh on the morning grass. The question that kept bothering my mind was: where or from whom could I have contracted this death from? I felt like a prostitute who could not finger the man responsible for the life kicking inside of her.
Could it be at the school? As you would agree with me, we cannot pride ourselves to say that we led a chaste life. Not at all. We really ‘rocked’ life there with careless abandon as if there was no tomorrow. We set the whole town ablaze with our vaginas. It was always from one party to another in town with strange, strange men. While we pretended to be studying on campus, our numerous agents or pimps, if I may use a more crude word, were out in the daytime with our pictures to cajole prospective rich customers into patronizing us. In the night when the deals must have been settled, their posh cars would crawl to the hostels under the cloak of darkness to pick us up. Some were Ministers, Governors, Commissioners, Chairmen, down to even the common bricklayers who could afford our high prices. Indeed, prostitution had a new name when we were still nursing students. Can you still remember the night when you and I were invited to attend to one Alhaji Maikudi in his plush villa? Not that I think you will ever forget. I find this particular outing more memorable and quixotic because that was the only time we attended to the libido of a single man together on the bed. Even co-wives never had it this exciting. It was like an erotic scene in a pornographic film. What about the highly exclusive parties where we ladies always outnumbered the men? I can imagine you laughing yourself silly at the recollection of those bad, bad days of our life. We were students yet lived better than many working-class ladies. We ate full fried chickens when our school mates could barely make both ends meet from the lean pocket money their parents were magnanimous enough to give them. Life was indeed in our pockets.
Didn’t we extend our training from school to the real, dog-eat-dog world outside? While our mates were busy roaming the streets with their lifeless certificates, there we were gainfully employed by the federal government. We simply used what we had to get what we wanted, as the expression which has of late gained currency in our socio-political milieu, goes. We were smart enough to understand the language of our times and spoke it very fluently. But why is my case different? Why is it only me that is saddled with this deadly virus while you’re free like the bird of the air to roam the earth, unfettered? Is there anything called justice in this life?
Now before you accuse me of being envious of you, I want you to know that these are the musings, nay, the outpourings of a soul at the extremity of life who could clutch at any straw to maintain sanity. What’s more, Andy’s rejection has finally severed my last tether on life. I feel dead in the midst of the living. So, you must learn to forgive me if I rant off course a little every now and then.
It’s really amazing how relationships that have lasted for more than four years could hit the rocks without any warning or foreboding in just one day, with, of course, the female partners being the worse for it because in their lives, time is of the essence like perishable goods. I cannot still believe that Andy could just walk out of my life when I needed him most. Where is the love that he so proclaimed for me? Or is it what love is all about to our men? Come to think of it now, what didn’t he do in order to win my love? I remember you had to put in a word for him before I shrugged off my pretence. I did love him from the very first day that he made the overtures to me but I had to be sure by making him pass through several mind-boggling tests. You may call it we women’s wiles, if you like! You know, men have a way of not valuing the love they got on a platter of silver and believe rather erroneously that the more pains they undergo in winning a woman’s love, the sweeter the conquests! Can anything be more ludicrous? Until he showed his true colours, I had always thought Andy was different from the stereotypical male image in our hearts.
In the heyday of our affairs, he was an embodiment of perfection. So kind, altruistic, caring and passionate for me and this is not to mention his faithfulness. Throughout our affairs, he had never given me cause to suspect that he had another girl besides me. If you know what commitment entails, he was so committed to our relationship that I’m still shocked out of my wits that he could call it quits after five good years, Chichi. Where have I erred, eh?
On that eventful night, we had driven in his Mercedes Benz to Me and You Guest Inn at the capital. As he drove, I noticed his hands were unsteady on the steering wheel. After several years with him, I knew these were symptoms of nervousness which always heralded great confessions from him. What was on his mind tonight? I held my breath tremulously. The suspense was choking the life out of me. The dinner we had this night never settled down well in me.
He had begun by telling me so many things about himself which I had never known before: his family background, life and work. I sat on one of the chairs, enraptured by his enchanting monologue, punctuated occasionally with a question or two from me. Finally, he dropped the bombshell. Would I mind to be his wife and co-traveller in this journey of life? It was my turn to blush coyly as if that was my first time with him. Anyway, you could guess my answer. I was touched by his earnestness and moved to tell him the other side of my life which he had never known. Great revelations beget great revelations. You know that I‘m not the churchwoman type but my favourite quotation from the Bible is: ‘the deep calleth unto the deep’. Unfortunately, that turned out to be my undoing. Dear Chichi, I was naïve enough to tell him that I had been tested positive to the deadly virus before he met me. There was a dead silence after this ear-tingling revelation from me. His face was expressionless but I knew his mind was working very fast. What would be my fate now? I held my breath like a man under water. Suddenly, he cast a glance at his Rolex wristwatch, got rather hurriedly to his feet and said it was high time we left for home. The drive back was funereal and we never exchanged a word until I alighted at my place while he drove away into the night without as much as bidding me goodnight. Gone with the night, l mumbled a likely epitaph for our love.
That night he refused to answer my calls for the very first time in our relationship. I tried and tried times without number, all to no avail. His cell phone would ring and ring many times and it’d go off, switched off by him, Chichi! I knew within myself that I had lost him. But where was I wrong, Chinyere? Was I wrong in telling him the true state of my health? Or was it not expected of me to reveal such sordid truth to him? Was it not out of true love that whenever he wanted to come into me, I’d always insist he use condoms because of his safety? If I was that selfish and vengeful as you know many of our fellow girls are, wouldn’t I have shared it with him and other men instead of dying or suffering alone?
Was I too selfish to ask him to still love me in spite of making such a great confession to him? Would that be asking too much of a man I had loved for more than four years of my life? The simple explanation for his action is that he had never loved me enough to take the risk of marrying and living with a woman living positively. And mind you, that would not be something new under heaven if he had done that. As a nurse, I’ve read that in the Western world and even tiny Third World countries like the Zambia, Gambia and Kenya in Africa, discordant couples are on the increase. They always use condoms except during the women’s ovulation periods, the only safe period to indulge in flesh-to-flesh sex for the purposes of procreation and to hinder the transmission to the other negative partners. And, of course, when the positive women are pregnant, they go on special anti-retroviral drugs and even during breast-feeding for three months’ periods or more. Why was my own case different?
Enough of my heart-rending autobiography. Let’s now talk about you. I guess by now you know my stand as regards your plan to go ahead with the marriage to your Mr. Right. If you insist I must put it down in black and white, I say go ahead and marry your white man, sister! You’ve my blessings. At least over there, they still understand the true meaning of real love. Here in Africa, it’s a strange word imported to us like democracy. Efforts made to transplant it have always proved abortive. A dismal failure, wouldn’t you say? That’s why our so-called love cannot withstand the vagaries of life such as objections from family relations, harsh economy, barrenness, you name them. Go ahead and marry your white man with the colour of pork! You laugh. In my own case, here I sit in the coldest corner of the world, chewing the cud of regret. Those who are living positively with the virus like myself are daily being discriminated against like lepers in Biblical times. We suffer worse fate than the osu in our culture. And as if all these are not enough, we’re condemned to a life of swallowing drugs like pebbles for ever. The fact that until a new discovery in science puts an end to this pandemic or if Christ comes as the Christians believe, we’ll be living the lives of invalids till thy Kingdom come, makes one want to end it all by committing suicide.
Take my honest advice, my sister, and marry your white man and enjoy your life over there cool. You do deserve it because you’ve passed through so many ordeals in the hands of our selfish men and sexist society. Our world has no right to judge you harshly because it is equally guilty.
I’m afraid I cannot go further than this. I’m feeling rather drowsy because of the anti-malarial drugs I’ve taken in the morning. The anti-retroviral drugs can only prolong the life of a victim but can never prevent the attack of opportunistic diseases that will assail the fragile body every now and then.
Always remember me in your prayers. Please give my warm regards to your Mr. Right. Erm … what’s that his strange name again? Dwight, right? What a name! Anyway, give my love to him. I wish the two of you all the best in life as he walks down the aisle with you. It’s goodbye for now. Cheers.
Ever yours,
Clara
Alas, what happened next was not what the world would believe would ever happen to a nurse. But there it was, so solid like the stethoscope one would use on a patient’s chest. Termites fed on my head. I guess you must be wondering why I‘m recounting this sad episode of my life. I believe in the purgative power of tragedies, especially those of yesterdays, to heal the wounds of today. That is what the dramatists call catharsis. It’s only by reliving the past that I can be able to grapple with the tragedies of the present. Andy‘s exit from my life is as painful as the jolt I received when I couldn’t make the final list to the US. If it had stopped at that, that wouldn’t have worried me so much like the questions it raised concerning my health. Why was I not selected? Was anything wrong with me? When their silence was too diplomatic for my liking, I embarked on a quest of self-discovery.
Dearest Chichi, you know the rest of the story. The guinea fowl had pecked on the numbered grains of my life. I was tested positive to the deadly virus. That fact stung me like the acidic tongue of a wicked mother-in-law. A tsunami that overturned my world. I, Clara Nwokocha positive? No, life has never known a worse tragedy. I was simply devastated; I saw my small world crumbling down like the sand-houses we used to build as little children by the riverbank when the rain would come with the wind to destroy. My life was cut down when the dew was still fresh on the morning grass. The question that kept bothering my mind was: where or from whom could I have contracted this death from? I felt like a prostitute who could not finger the man responsible for the life kicking inside of her.
Could it be at the school? As you would agree with me, we cannot pride ourselves to say that we led a chaste life. Not at all. We really ‘rocked’ life there with careless abandon as if there was no tomorrow. We set the whole town ablaze with our vaginas. It was always from one party to another in town with strange, strange men. While we pretended to be studying on campus, our numerous agents or pimps, if I may use a more crude word, were out in the daytime with our pictures to cajole prospective rich customers into patronizing us. In the night when the deals must have been settled, their posh cars would crawl to the hostels under the cloak of darkness to pick us up. Some were Ministers, Governors, Commissioners, Chairmen, down to even the common bricklayers who could afford our high prices. Indeed, prostitution had a new name when we were still nursing students. Can you still remember the night when you and I were invited to attend to one Alhaji Maikudi in his plush villa? Not that I think you will ever forget. I find this particular outing more memorable and quixotic because that was the only time we attended to the libido of a single man together on the bed. Even co-wives never had it this exciting. It was like an erotic scene in a pornographic film. What about the highly exclusive parties where we ladies always outnumbered the men? I can imagine you laughing yourself silly at the recollection of those bad, bad days of our life. We were students yet lived better than many working-class ladies. We ate full fried chickens when our school mates could barely make both ends meet from the lean pocket money their parents were magnanimous enough to give them. Life was indeed in our pockets.
Didn’t we extend our training from school to the real, dog-eat-dog world outside? While our mates were busy roaming the streets with their lifeless certificates, there we were gainfully employed by the federal government. We simply used what we had to get what we wanted, as the expression which has of late gained currency in our socio-political milieu, goes. We were smart enough to understand the language of our times and spoke it very fluently. But why is my case different? Why is it only me that is saddled with this deadly virus while you’re free like the bird of the air to roam the earth, unfettered? Is there anything called justice in this life?
Now before you accuse me of being envious of you, I want you to know that these are the musings, nay, the outpourings of a soul at the extremity of life who could clutch at any straw to maintain sanity. What’s more, Andy’s rejection has finally severed my last tether on life. I feel dead in the midst of the living. So, you must learn to forgive me if I rant off course a little every now and then.
It’s really amazing how relationships that have lasted for more than four years could hit the rocks without any warning or foreboding in just one day, with, of course, the female partners being the worse for it because in their lives, time is of the essence like perishable goods. I cannot still believe that Andy could just walk out of my life when I needed him most. Where is the love that he so proclaimed for me? Or is it what love is all about to our men? Come to think of it now, what didn’t he do in order to win my love? I remember you had to put in a word for him before I shrugged off my pretence. I did love him from the very first day that he made the overtures to me but I had to be sure by making him pass through several mind-boggling tests. You may call it we women’s wiles, if you like! You know, men have a way of not valuing the love they got on a platter of silver and believe rather erroneously that the more pains they undergo in winning a woman’s love, the sweeter the conquests! Can anything be more ludicrous? Until he showed his true colours, I had always thought Andy was different from the stereotypical male image in our hearts.
In the heyday of our affairs, he was an embodiment of perfection. So kind, altruistic, caring and passionate for me and this is not to mention his faithfulness. Throughout our affairs, he had never given me cause to suspect that he had another girl besides me. If you know what commitment entails, he was so committed to our relationship that I’m still shocked out of my wits that he could call it quits after five good years, Chichi. Where have I erred, eh?
On that eventful night, we had driven in his Mercedes Benz to Me and You Guest Inn at the capital. As he drove, I noticed his hands were unsteady on the steering wheel. After several years with him, I knew these were symptoms of nervousness which always heralded great confessions from him. What was on his mind tonight? I held my breath tremulously. The suspense was choking the life out of me. The dinner we had this night never settled down well in me.
He had begun by telling me so many things about himself which I had never known before: his family background, life and work. I sat on one of the chairs, enraptured by his enchanting monologue, punctuated occasionally with a question or two from me. Finally, he dropped the bombshell. Would I mind to be his wife and co-traveller in this journey of life? It was my turn to blush coyly as if that was my first time with him. Anyway, you could guess my answer. I was touched by his earnestness and moved to tell him the other side of my life which he had never known. Great revelations beget great revelations. You know that I‘m not the churchwoman type but my favourite quotation from the Bible is: ‘the deep calleth unto the deep’. Unfortunately, that turned out to be my undoing. Dear Chichi, I was naïve enough to tell him that I had been tested positive to the deadly virus before he met me. There was a dead silence after this ear-tingling revelation from me. His face was expressionless but I knew his mind was working very fast. What would be my fate now? I held my breath like a man under water. Suddenly, he cast a glance at his Rolex wristwatch, got rather hurriedly to his feet and said it was high time we left for home. The drive back was funereal and we never exchanged a word until I alighted at my place while he drove away into the night without as much as bidding me goodnight. Gone with the night, l mumbled a likely epitaph for our love.
That night he refused to answer my calls for the very first time in our relationship. I tried and tried times without number, all to no avail. His cell phone would ring and ring many times and it’d go off, switched off by him, Chichi! I knew within myself that I had lost him. But where was I wrong, Chinyere? Was I wrong in telling him the true state of my health? Or was it not expected of me to reveal such sordid truth to him? Was it not out of true love that whenever he wanted to come into me, I’d always insist he use condoms because of his safety? If I was that selfish and vengeful as you know many of our fellow girls are, wouldn’t I have shared it with him and other men instead of dying or suffering alone?
Was I too selfish to ask him to still love me in spite of making such a great confession to him? Would that be asking too much of a man I had loved for more than four years of my life? The simple explanation for his action is that he had never loved me enough to take the risk of marrying and living with a woman living positively. And mind you, that would not be something new under heaven if he had done that. As a nurse, I’ve read that in the Western world and even tiny Third World countries like the Zambia, Gambia and Kenya in Africa, discordant couples are on the increase. They always use condoms except during the women’s ovulation periods, the only safe period to indulge in flesh-to-flesh sex for the purposes of procreation and to hinder the transmission to the other negative partners. And, of course, when the positive women are pregnant, they go on special anti-retroviral drugs and even during breast-feeding for three months’ periods or more. Why was my own case different?
Enough of my heart-rending autobiography. Let’s now talk about you. I guess by now you know my stand as regards your plan to go ahead with the marriage to your Mr. Right. If you insist I must put it down in black and white, I say go ahead and marry your white man, sister! You’ve my blessings. At least over there, they still understand the true meaning of real love. Here in Africa, it’s a strange word imported to us like democracy. Efforts made to transplant it have always proved abortive. A dismal failure, wouldn’t you say? That’s why our so-called love cannot withstand the vagaries of life such as objections from family relations, harsh economy, barrenness, you name them. Go ahead and marry your white man with the colour of pork! You laugh. In my own case, here I sit in the coldest corner of the world, chewing the cud of regret. Those who are living positively with the virus like myself are daily being discriminated against like lepers in Biblical times. We suffer worse fate than the osu in our culture. And as if all these are not enough, we’re condemned to a life of swallowing drugs like pebbles for ever. The fact that until a new discovery in science puts an end to this pandemic or if Christ comes as the Christians believe, we’ll be living the lives of invalids till thy Kingdom come, makes one want to end it all by committing suicide.
Take my honest advice, my sister, and marry your white man and enjoy your life over there cool. You do deserve it because you’ve passed through so many ordeals in the hands of our selfish men and sexist society. Our world has no right to judge you harshly because it is equally guilty.
I’m afraid I cannot go further than this. I’m feeling rather drowsy because of the anti-malarial drugs I’ve taken in the morning. The anti-retroviral drugs can only prolong the life of a victim but can never prevent the attack of opportunistic diseases that will assail the fragile body every now and then.
Always remember me in your prayers. Please give my warm regards to your Mr. Right. Erm … what’s that his strange name again? Dwight, right? What a name! Anyway, give my love to him. I wish the two of you all the best in life as he walks down the aisle with you. It’s goodbye for now. Cheers.
Ever yours,
Clara